SNES's slow start in the gaming market

red_sox_papired_sox_papi
in Gamer's Gauntlet
So I was a bit bored this morning and decided to compile my top ten favorite SNES games (for like the 100th time) and I saw something that caught my attention. Firstof all here's my list:



1- Chrono Trigger (1995)

2- Super Mario RPG (1996)

3- Super Metroid (1994)

4- Final Fantasy III (1994)

5- Donkey Kong Country (1994)

6- LOZ:LTTP (1992)

7- Super Mario World (1991)

8- Earthbound (1995)

9- Super Mario Kart (1992)

10- FInal Fantasy 2 (1991)



Notable mentions: DKC2 (1995), DKC3 (1996), Kirby Superstar (1996), Super Punch Out!! (1994)



What caught my attention was that 6 of my favorite games were released in 1994 or later. I was 6 (1996) when I got my first SNES, so I grew up playing all these games. I didn't play a lot of the earlier SNES games, because when I was done with these ones, I got an N64 and so on.



This made me realize why the SEGA Genesis had the upper hand on the SNES for a couple years. I know the Genesis was released two years before the SNES, but it still took three years before the SNES started pumping out all those great games. I'm not saying the early SNES games were bad, I'm just saying that there wasn't enough great ones to compete with Sonic 1 and 2 and the Genesis having UN-censored games.



I never thought about it before, because I always portrayed the SNES to be this beast of a console that dominated the market from the get go. Don't get me wrong, it is a beast, but took a couple yearsto grow.



If you guys think I'm wrong, please don't bash me or start any flame wars. It's MY opinion, so keep this thread clean please. I'd like to hear comments/info from people that were around for the Genesis vs SNES era that either agree or disagree (in a nice fashion) with me.
«1

Comments

  • TWarwick07TWarwick07
    if i remember right there were very few launch titles for the snes and it took a while to get the library of games built up
  • dra600ndra600n
    4 out of 10 of your top 10 are within the first year and a half of SNES's life. I believe F-Zero was an early title as well (maybe launch title?), and it's a fun and well polished game, as was Pilot Wings (I believe that was a launch title). The SNES library is huge (over 700 games), so just dig a bit deeper and you'll find some true gems. It's not unreasonable to think that the end of the systems life that games would be spectacular by their standards, since they had a few years to learn the hardware and work around the limitations.
  • TWarwick07TWarwick07
    Your right dragoon both f-zero and pioltwings were launch games
  • jonebonejonebone
    Sega definitely destroyed SNES out of the gate. I actually never owned an SNES until after my join date here, as I was a genny kid. Seemed like all of the kids in the neighborhood had a Genesis, a couple had both, and I can only think of one that had an SNES only.



    It's funny, because looking back nowadays, there are many more games on SNES that I'd rather play than Genesis. Sega had the Sonics which did very well, and Mortal Kombat with the blood code, but not much else that makes me want to collect for it.



    Though Genesis Theme Park is still one of my top 10 favorite games all-time.
  • arch_8ngelarch_8ngel

    Originally posted by: jonebone



    Sega definitely destroyed SNES out of the gate. I actually never owned an SNES until after my join date here, as I was a genny kid. Seemed like all of the kids in the neighborhood had a Genesis, a couple had both, and I can only think of one that had an SNES only.

     





    This was regional.  Everybody I knew owned an  SNES, and only a couple had a genesis.
  • arch_8ngelarch_8ngel

    Originally posted by: dra600n



    4 out of 10 of your top 10 are within the first year and a half of SNES's life. I believe F-Zero was an early title as well (maybe launch title?), and it's a fun and well polished game, as was Pilot Wings (I believe that was a launch title). The SNES library is huge (over 700 games), so just dig a bit deeper and you'll find some true gems. It's not unreasonable to think that the end of the systems life that games would be spectacular by their standards, since they had a few years to learn the hardware and work around the limitations.



    The original Final Fight was within the first year, as well.  Definitely upped the ante from Double Dragon on the NES...




  • dra600ndra600n
    Genesis also had a 2 year head start if I remember right, so there was a decent library when the SNES had already came out.



    Lots of great titles in the first year or 2 on the SNES though. I've never played Final Fight, so I can't compare it to Double Dragon.
  • bearcat-dougbearcat-doug
    If I recall correctly, the SNES launched with Super Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, SimCity and Gradius III all of which are great games IMO. I'm going by the NA list on these, but according to it, Final Fantasy II, Final Fight, Super Castlevania IV and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts were also notable first year titles. Assuming Wikipedia is correct, the system launched on August 23, 1991 so I'd say that's a pretty solid list of titles just released in the first four months alone. That's hardly what I'd consider a slow start.
  • dra600ndra600n
    ^ Agreed. Lots of great titles through all the years of the SNES, never a slow down IMO either.
  • arch_8ngelarch_8ngel

    Originally posted by: dra600n



     I've never played Final Fight, so I can't compare it to Double Dragon.





    My heart breaks for you... 



    The combat is definitely what Double Dragon had hoped to be, IMO, and probably the best looking non-NeoGeo console beat-em-up from the era.
  • dra600ndra600n
    Well Nathan, since I apparently have it (based on my collection tool here), it looks like I will have to give this game a go this weekend



    There were a lot of games I never played on the SNES that I either didn't know existed (Secret of the Stars, for example), or games I weren't really interested in (beat'm ups, shooters) back when they were available in the stores. I was mainly an RPG player, and still am, but I've expanded my tastes and opened my mind a bit more, so there are definitely titles I need to add into my "must play" stack.
  • bearcat-dougbearcat-doug

    Originally posted by: dra600n



    ^ Agreed. Lots of great titles through all the years of the SNES, never a slow down IMO either.



    When I was looking through the list of releases by date I would definately agree. IMO, not only did it come out of the gate with a strong lineup, there was a steady pace of solid titles through the console's lifespan.


  • Luigi_MasterLuigi_Master
    The thing that was wrong with the SNES is that, unlike the NES, it wasn't an "all around system", neither was the Genesis. The SNES had an advanced but horribly underpowered processor, while the Genesis had graphical abilities just above the NES. As a result, the SNES' strongest titles were RPGs and racers, since they don't have many items to render on screen to bog down the processor. Super Ghosts 'N Goblins and Gradius 3 were ridden with slow down, so I doubt that even if they optimized the coding, they'd run any better. However, Contra III seemed to throw that limitation out the window, since there's a lot of things going on screen at a given time.



    In short, the SNES did well everywhere except the US, but still outsold the Genesis in worldwide numbers.
  • TWarwick07TWarwick07
    in my neighborhood it was really almost 50 / 50 , until street fighter came out on the snes and that put the nail in the coffin
  • TanookiTanooki
    Sega only had the upper hand because they came out 2 years earlier in 1989 and had been making jerks out of themselves with the Nintendon't smear campaign ads that caused the 16bit wars firing the first shot at the aging NES. In that tie they had a situation of a big pile (over 100 easily) of games out there people could enjoy and some of them were quite decent and a few fantastic.



    SNES though came out in late 1991 and it launched along side of stuff like Pilotwings, SimCity, and F-Zero all from them. Around that day and trickling in slowly as the months went by in 1991 you did get some more games, some truly fantastic showing or letting you hear some great capabilities. My first two purchases once I nailed SMW after 2 weeks solid at it were both Gradius III and ActRaiser. Beyond that within a short period you did get FF2, Darius Twin, Super Castlevania, Super Ghouls n Ghosts, UN Squadron, Final Fight, and various other less notable things. It's kind of unfair to say it started out badly with titles like those. Sega hurt them for a couple years simply because of advertising and bath math of quantity over quality. Eventually SNES got quantity to match the quality and Sega got smoked. Of those 1991 titles I ended up with FF2, SuperCV4, SGnG, and Final Fight along side of the two I mentioned.
  • dra600ndra600n
    Um... the snes did poorly in the states? Can't display too many things on screen at once? Not a well rounded system? Super Ghosts n Goblins and Gradius 3 were very early releases. Every play Super R-Type? Contra 3 proves your theory wrong as well. The SNES had hardware transparency, 4 planes to work with, and a higher proc speed iirc than the genesis, which only had 2 planes + the window plane. If the coders were able to optimize code back then without the time restriction, I bet any game that has slow down would be fixed.



    Platformers: Mega Man 7, X, X2, X3, Super Mario World (just to name a few)

    Racers: Uniracers, Mario Kart, F-Zero, and there's others (I'm not a huge racing fan)

    RPG's: Final Fantasy 2, 3, Lufia 2, Soul Blazer, etc (this is a long list)

    Simulation Games: Pilot Wings, Sim City, Sim City 2000, Sim Ant, Sim Earth, Act Raiser 1 & 2, etc

    Strategy Games/Puzzles: Tetris/Dr. Mario, Tetris 2, Goof Troop, Puzzle (or whatever), and some more that I'm forgetting

    Beat'm Ups: Final Fight, Separation Anxiety, TMNT 4, Final Fight 2, 3, etc.



    Seems to be a very well rounded console just on those few titles, plus all the games that fall in those categories that I didn't list, or that I don't know of since I haven't played 1/8th of the titles yet.
  • K.ThrowerK.Thrower
    Pretty much everything above is dead on. The biggest factor as mentioned that gave Sega the upper hand early on was it's 2 year head start. I know friends that got an NES in the late 80s, a Genesis in 90 or 91, and then, bam, the SNES showed up as the latest want, but spending $200 per console every year or so wasn't on most parent's priority list. I got my SNES for my b-day May 1992, and was still the second person I knew to have one.



    Also noteworthy was Sega's ability to produce many top notch first party titles, unlike any other console maker, especially faithful arcade ports. This is seen across every Sega console as one of their strongest points. They could survive without 3rd party help, but with backing by companies like EA, they became the strongest console for sports fans. A lot of who was playing a Genesis or SNES was based on what genre of games they were into.
  • TanookiTanooki
    That's so true about the costs going in for parents. I had the choice of a Genesis, but thankfully Sega swore me off it by their own hand. Even as a 14 year old in 1991 their ad campaigns disgusted and aggravated me so badly I refused to buy let alone touch the system. I kept aware of what it had coming out via stuff like EGM magazine but that was it. My SNES I bought the day it rolled out, had my mom go to the store when it came out on the premise of a Christmas gift like the NES before it, but I got all hot and bothered as she went to Toys R Us and I went into my saving mail pobox wooden safe thing and found I actually had the cash down to the penny. By the time she got home I was off the walls waiting downstairs and when she pulled up and popped the trunk she was like 'not until Christmas' and I was like, no, now. I stuffed the cash in her hands and did nothing but eat, sleep, shit and schooling and Super Mario World for 2 weeks, and then some chores on the side to pad the allowance and went after Gradius and Act Raiser shortly after.



    To this day I thank Sega for being insulting corrupt marketing liars, got me the best damn 16bit system the market has the moment it arrived. I also credit Sega for their slimy tactics in forcing a strong upgrade in quality with later NES releases from 1990 forward. Around that time you saw lot better visuals, better use of audio, larger experiences with platformers and other genres trying to be more like what Genesis did despite it couldn't. Makers like Taito and Capcom really went all out to squeeze what they could from the aging hardware and really took it up a notch.
  • cradelitcradelit
    It's funny looking back now that snes and genesis have this huge rivalry..

    At the time, they were the same system to me, my friends had the same games I had with a few exceptions, and the differences were negligable except it was annoying that we couldn't trade games. It's like 360 vs ps3 now.. There is a couple exclusives for each system, one maybe sells more but for 90% of the uses, they are two ways of playing the same games.
  • dra600ndra600n

    Originally posted by: cradelit



    It's funny looking back now that snes and genesis have this huge rivalry..

    At the time, they were the same system to me, my friends had the same games I had with a few exceptions, and the differences were negligable except it was annoying that we couldn't trade games. It's like 360 vs ps3 now.. There is a couple exclusives for each system, one maybe sells more but for 90% of the uses, they are two ways of playing the same games.



    Pretty much, though some games were better on SNES, and others were better on Genesis... few anyway... but each had their pro's and cons. The biggest con for me was the lack of RPG's on the Genesis, while the SNES dominated with them, but the ones on Genesis were really fantastic (Shining in the darkness, Shining Force 1 + 2... well, kinda 2 lol, Crusaders of Centy, Exile... which is more of an action/rpg, and even though I personally don't care for them, Phantasy Star series). I liked both consoles growing up, but I prefer the SNES due to the RPG's.


  • YelirYelir

    Originally posted by: cradelit



    It's funny looking back now that snes and genesis have this huge rivalry..

    At the time, they were the same system to me, my friends had the same games I had with a few exceptions, and the differences were negligable except it was annoying that we couldn't trade games. It's like 360 vs ps3 now.. There is a couple exclusives for each system, one maybe sells more but for 90% of the uses, they are two ways of playing the same games.





    Now that I think of it, it was really that way for most people, and it remains that way even with the newer systems. Apart from major console exclusives or maybe an extra feature one port may have had, you'll be hard pressed to tell what system was pumping out what games these days until the kids of today want to collect for it in the future. All hell may break loose (again).
  • RyuHayabusaRyuHayabusa
    Actually, despite Sega having a two year head start on the SNES, their lead disappeared almost immediately after the SNES' release due to the massive demand for Nintendo's new system. It wasn't until the Genesis price cut to $149, Sonic the Hedgehog caught on, the whole Mortal Kombat fiasco, and the SEGA! marketing campaign that Sega really took off and competed neck and neck with Nintendo, at least until about 94. By that time Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox, and so many other great SNES titles were out that Nintendo pulled away in North America. Nintendo's image of making games for little kids hurt them too. In Japan, the Mega Drive was always a distant third place and never really competed. Nintendo's closest competition there was NEC's PC Engine, boosted by it's CDROM capabilities.



    Personally, I'd say the SNES had a very solid first year of titles. Super Mario World, F-Zero, Castlevania IV, Contra III, Gradius III, Actraiser, Street Fighter 2, etc. Only 4 or 5 five games at launch but they were all solid titles. Not as impressive as the NES' 18 or so launch titles but still nice.
  • Luigi_MasterLuigi_Master
    Didn't the Genesis run at 7.67MHz while the SNES ran at 3.58MHz? Doesn't that mean that the Genesis was a faster machine, or are they "just numbers", meaning that the SNES' 3.58 could perform as well, if not better, than the Genesis' 7.67? Because from what I've heard, the SNES' major weakness was it's slow processor, which gave Sega the ability to have games such as ThunderForce IV and the Sonic series.
  • removed04092017removed04092017
    That's nowhere close to reality, kinda like a 3MHZ Z80 should kill an NES's 6502 at 1.78Mhz, but the z80 doesn't come close to the 1.78Mhz 6502's power at only 3Mhz. The Motorola chips are big endian and also aren't as efficient as the 65816 clock wise, although IMO the clockwise performance isn't very far off compared to the 65816, nowhere near. Although Motorola chips used right can be really efficient too. I haven't worked with a 68K and 65816 yet, but 6809 vs 6502, their 8-bit counterparts, work closely. 6809 isn't as efficient over all clock wise, but the 6809 also has more features, registers, 16-bit index registers, post-instruction index increments/deincrements, and lots of stuff the 6502 doesn't have. The 6502 though is still very powerful in it's own right for sure, it holds it's ground okay. But over all, it's not cut out for 16-bit operations, the 6809 will have 3 instructions in something the 6502 will need 6 to do and it adds up quickly. Clock speed isn't everything. That's why you never see 68000's running at 1Mhz too, they're just not that fast at that speed.
  • WATA GRADED WEBSITEWATA GRADED WEBSITE

    Originally posted by: dra600n



    4 out of 10 of your top 10 are within the first year and a half of SNES's life. I believe F-Zero was an early title as well (maybe launch title?), and it's a fun and well polished game, as was Pilot Wings (I believe that was a launch title). The SNES library is huge (over 700 games), so just dig a bit deeper and you'll find some true gems. It's not unreasonable to think that the end of the systems life that games would be spectacular by their standards, since they had a few years to learn the hardware and work around the limitations.





    Fzero pilot wings and super mario world were all launch titles and all great ones
  • red_sox_papired_sox_papi
    Thanks for the opinions guys. I do agree that the SNES had an awesome library coming out on the market. The launch titles were great compared to future consoles (gamecube). Like Jone said, there are far more games I would want to play on the SNES than the Genesis. The SNES has a huge library, most of them being decent to excellent games. It has more classics and better games than the Genesis.



    What I was trying to emphasize was the market shares. Didn't the Genesis have market shares over the SNES until 1994 or something like that? Maybe it's just a coincidence that most of my favorite games came out when the SNES took over (probably because I grew up with those games too). Does anyone know who had the market until when? From the research I've done, I agree 100% that the SNES has a better library and stood better the test of time, but most sites stipulate that the Genesis had a 60% to 40% market share in the US and Canada until 1993-94. Could this all be because the Genesis came out two years earlier, or did Sonic and blood make people choose the Genesis over the SNES?
  • dra600ndra600n
    ^ Seems like you are correct, according to the Wikipedia page on the console wars:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#16-bit_era



  • DJ_UnknownDJ_Unknown
    i definately was into snes, never owned a genesis =p
  • red_sox_papired_sox_papi

    Originally posted by: dra600n



    ^ Seems like you are correct, according to the Wikipedia page on the console wars:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_wars#16-bit_era

     



    Yea that was my starting point. I wasn't just reading it on wiki though so I also read other sites. The following link says SEGA had a 55 to 45% market share.



    http://retro.ign.com/articles/965/965032p1.html



    These ones share the opinion that most people have, SEGA had better marketing with the Genesis, but overall the SNES was a better console.



    http://www.geekcomix.com/vgh/fifth/snes.shtml

    http://www.screwattack.com/news/snes-vs-genesis-english-project
  • RyuHayabusaRyuHayabusa
    I've read that the SNES sold 23 million units to 20 million for the Genesis in North America. Regardless, worldwide they lost by a considerable margin. I always preferred the SNES over the Genesis. I had a friend who owned a Genesis for a while before the SNES came out, and while it was alright it didn't blow me away. I was obsessed with pics and info on the Super Famicom and when I finally played Super Mario World I was blown away, especially hearing the echo effects in the Vanilla Dome. The Genesis never did anything for me because of the color palette, the sound chip, and the controller. I dislike round D-Pads, always have. The colors on so many Genesis games were bad, particularly arcade ports because you could always see the huge difference between the SNES and Genesis ports, like on Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Heck, even original games like Castlevania Bloodlines and Castlevania IV, there's just no comparison graphically IMO. When it comes to sound, the gap is even larger when you compare the the Castlevania games. SNES was just a better console for me.
Sign In or Register to comment.